Face spotter that beats human eye

A facial recognition system that is better than the human eye has been created by researchers in Hong Kong.

The breakthrough could help police better identify criminals or allow gadgets to unlock only when they “see” their owner.

Chaochao Lu and Xiaoou Tang, Chinese University researchers, tested their system, called GuassainFace, on a database known as Labelled Faces in the Wild. This is a store of 13,000 photos of 6,000 public figures that tests facial recognition systems by getting them to compare pairs of photos and decide if they are the same person.

GuassainFace results showed 98.5 per cent accuracy, which is better than human beings, who can perform at up to 97.5 per cent accuracy.